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Dessert

Fig Cake

A layered cake with fig filling made from sugar, butter, flour, corn starch, baking powder, egg whites, and figs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fig Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar, butter, and milk.

  3. Mix in the sifted flour, corn starch, and baking powder.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites last.

  5. Divide the batter into three layers and bake until golden.

Make the fig filling

  1. For the filling, combine 1 cup of sugar and 5 tablespoons of cold water in a saucepan.

  2. Bring to a boil to create a syrup, then cool.

  3. Pour the syrup over the chopped figs.

Assemble

  1. Layer the figs between the three layers of cake.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + figtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + figtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together66 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the cake a tender, soft crumb.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in to trap air, giving the cake lift and a light structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas as it heats, helping the layers rise.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Figs
Add chewy texture and fruity sweetness between the cake layers.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and the syrup, and helps the crumb stay moist.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when beaten to stiff foam. Folding gently keeps that air in the batter; overmixing deflates it, leaving a dense cake that rises poorly.

Swap the fig

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, butter, milk, corn, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Figthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter, milk, corn, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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